Today, a significant amount of information is communicated via the Short Message Service (SMS) infrastructure that is provided by mobile phone carriers worldwide. Other message oriented communications paths also exist, such as Twitter, and Google Groups. This type of communications has become widely popular over traditional voice conversations because it offers the participants some semblance of privacy in a room. No longer can an individual just eavesdrop on at least part of a conversation. In this simple case, an interloper needs to be close enough to be able to read the screen of the communicating device.
While a naive user may believe that text conversations are private, in fact some nefarious party can easily purchase technology over the Internet or elsewhere that allows him to monitor the communications exchange. Thus, no real security exists in the vast majority of modern text messaging. An attacker can easily intercept and read the texts you send to your friends, your family, your business colleagues and others.
Even with the inherent security risks, many entities who ought to be concerned about security and secrecy have embraced the technology due to the immediacy of the communications. Doctors and nurses may use the technology to exchange patient information, even though this type of information is required by law to be secured. Financial institutions often send updates to their customers about their account balances, transactions, trades, etc., that could easily be intercepted by malicious parties. Other use cases abound.
Some shy away from using these communications paths due to the insecurity, but these vital and resilient communication channels have proven useful during times when other paths such as traditional voice and data networks are either overloaded or inaccessible, especially during natural or unanticipated disasters. During these occurrences, it has been well documented, even by the US government that:                “because wireless networks may be congested during an emergency, sending a text message may work better than placing a voice call.” (http://www.fcc.gov/guides/emergency-communications)        
Consider government officials who need to exchange secure but potentially unclassified information. Other critical infrastructure such as a country's energy grid, sensors, or other machine to machine (M2M) communications provide for command and control of the equipment. Individuals with mal-intent could easily create havoc during the exchange of information in these scenarios.
Thus, with the proliferation of mobile, portable, or other remote computing devices being utilized in day-to-day communications, retaining secure access with these devices is of paramount importance. Prior art is filed with examples of how to provide for secure communications with these devices over traditional data interconnects such as IP based networks, virtual private networks, transport layer security, etc.
However, many of these mediums are bandwidth constrained. Trying to layer traditional methods of securing communications onto these environments may prove fruitless as well as potentially exacerbate an already difficult situation. Therefore, it would be highly desirable to provide a lightweight solution that enables secure access to and communications with these computing devices over message oriented channels as an alternative.
Furthermore, many systems today are unable to participate in any correspondence via this technology, or are saddled with additional overhead when communicating information to peer systems through some existing gateway infrastructure.
The exemplary illustrative non-limiting technology herein addresses these needs in a multitude of ways. Exemplary illustrative non-limiting technology herein thus provides methods and systems provided by a server based computing system utilized by an organization or entity to communicate securely with mobile, portable, or other embedded systems via message oriented communications facilities.
An example non-limiting Protected Mobility Enterprise Console (PMEC) allows an organization or entity to utilize these alternate communications paths through a provided console interface and/or via exposed web services that other applications can use to send and receive potentially private information. The exemplary illustrative non-limiting technology herein provides, among other things, security of communications between the PMEC and collaborating devices.
To enable secure exchange of message oriented communications and maintain access to cooperating devices, services such as those provided by a protected mobility enterprise console (PMEC) can be utilized. In one exemplary illustrative non-limiting arrangement, the PMEC is an application that can be installed by a given organization on a generic computer based platform, or provided as a hosted/managed service for a given entity. Its illustrative non-limiting core functionality allows individuals, operators, or other applications to securely exchange sometimes critical information with other devices that are within its domain. The exchange of information can be accomplished over Internet related protocols such as HTTP, alternatively through messaging services that provide gateway services to wireless network short messaging services, or directly through interconnects with communication carriers.
Enabling more than one communications path to potentially critical infrastructure or personnel via the cooperating computing devices provides for resiliency of information flow and in some cases helps maintain business continuity. First responders, governments, military, may also find these services useful.